Mostly WordPress plus some other random thoughts and musings …

Email Users 4.8.2 released

Last night I released Email Users 4.8.2. This version addresses the use of several WordPress deprecated function messages, support for custom email headers and footers, and adds a feature to allow the admin to hide the Email Users menus from non-admin users. Full details can be found in the Change Log.

Hi Mike, yes I can .. best source see link below. Mass mailing is something the buddy press community wants for a long time (and won’t be implemented). The templates provide types of mail and mostly styling.

I finally had a chance to look at this suggestion. I have added it to the Email Users UAM integration PHP file however I have commented it out and left a note that it may be a solution for sites which employ roles. In my own UAM testing, it was not working but I do not have a role manager plugin in place. I am simply using UAM to put users into groups. It will be included in v4.8.5.

first of all, let me say what a great work your plugin is! Specially on the notification messages it does such an awesome job!! Thank you for that.

A little trickier seems to be the mass mail (send to users) section. I have read some comments and know that (for now?) there is no functionality to keep email templates similar to the wonderful method you implemented with notification messages (where the message once customized remains stored).

So every time I return to the “send to users” section the field here are again like a virgin. Empty. All work has to be done again.

Ok, you suggested to keep a copy of the (html) mail in a post somewhere. Could there be imaginable a better process? Can I for now somewhere introduce into your php files a “content” variable similar to notification variables (so awesome this feature!!) for this field?

And then I experimented some strange issues with html mails inserted into the “send to users” mail field. I took perfectly formatted html mails (exact copies of well tested mailChimp templates i.g.) pasted them there and send it. They arrive (I use Mac Mail) with lots of extra vertical spaces introduced between section and mainly a the top of the email.

I am perfectly aware about the tricky things about html emails. But I assume that an exact copy of a mailChimp template should do the job in a quite good way.

I noted when I look at the raw code of my mail that your plugin somehow inserted some title information into the mail form the header part (which also seems to create the extra spaces). Do you know anything about that issue? Is there a way to adapt the php code that you did? Any ideas?

I would so much love to keep on using your plugin but I don’t know how to handle the html emails. For my client needs a very small “newsletter” service to a small number of recipients and I would hate to install an overweight thing like “Newsletter“ plugin to do the job that is only centimeter away from what I already achieved with your awesome plugin!

Any feedback is much appreciated. We may also discuss a payed support, no problem for me!

I’ve sat on your comment for a long time, I apologize. It scrolled off the screen of my Dashboard and I simply forgot about it.

I think the answer to your question about using the HTML templates is to look into the “mailusers_html_wrapper” filter which allows you to change the behavior of the HTML normally added to an email. There is an example included in Email Users in the examples directory. I am pretty sure this will do what you want.

As for the storing of template text for emails, it still isn’t clear to me why the existing post won’t work. You could put your entire newsletter content in a post and then use the Post Notification feature to distribute it to your users. Technically, I suppose it would be possible to create a custom post type to store an email template and then use it for the basis of an email. I don’t want to commit to doing this as my available time to work on WordPress plugins these days is pretty limited due to commitments with my job.

You receive updates via the WordPress Dashboard. If there is an update available, WordPress will show the plugin needs to be updated on the Dashboard > Updates menu. Support can be obtained by posting to the WordPress Support forum (but it there is a problem right now with the listing on WordPress.org I need to fix).

I was notified a few hours ago that WordPress.org has identified a security problem and asked me to fix it. Until it is fixed, the plugin is delisted. WordPress appears to be doing a very deep security analysis. They found some stuff last week which I fixed right away.

Security concern with the plugin itself. WordPress will delist a plugin if a security concern is raised until it is addressed and then the plugin will reappear in the plugin repository. I’ve read through their concern and I should be able to fix it pretty quickly this weekend, just been crazy at work so the non-work hobby work has to wait …

I have your comments – I typically don’t approve them until I have time to answer them and you have posed several questions which don’t have simple answers. I will answer, you’ll just have give me some time.

Ah ok! Thanks for notice. I already discovered that the html email problems around the extra added spaces came from wpautop which is relatively easy to avoid by modifying one of the php files. Great work! Hope it will be listed again soon.

And then there was also the blog name visible in the right corner in email when received in mail program (tested Mac Mail)
I changed first part of the problem in your email_users_send_user_mail.php by simply omitting this code part

Second problem solved by stupid CSS hack in my html mail head 😉
h3{
display:none ! important;
}
Worked.
Only small problems persist in my mail footer where some social images are a little shifted to the top. Sending the exact same construct through mailChimp doesn’t do this. Strange.

I love your plugin. Would love to have exact the same saved customize mail section as you have so brilliantly done with the notification part. This is awesome part! I love the variables being used from post!

This request comes up from time to time and unfortunately, it isn’t something I plan to do. It isn’t because I don’t think it is useful or a good idea. When you enable plugins on the front end you end up dealing with all sorts of theme inconsistencies which result in functionality not working as expected or in some cases, not working at all. It results in a much higher support burden for me and often times there is nothing I can do without access to the theme. I have another plugin where I deal with this sort of issue all the time. 90% of the time the problem is due to the theme and not the plugin. If it was as simple as introducing a couple of short codes I would have done so but it is more involved than that.